TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Hotheads and handguns can make the streets a dangerous place to be. KGUN9 had a chance to talk to the TPD officer who coordinates the department’s response to violent crime to learn more about what TPD does to help keep us safe.
In the past few months, we’ve seen young people well armed with guns, but not with good sense; like the carload of gunmen who shot up a party on 5th street and left a young woman dead.
Of the group that fired well over a hundred rounds at a hookah lounge on Speedway.
“Incidents historically may have resolved themselves with a fist fight, are now leading to incidents where there's gun violence.”
Lt. Aaron Wine says that’s happening all over the country. He leads the Violent Crime section at Tucson Police and says with just over fifty homicides so far this year, the rate of homicides is a close match for last year.
TPD’s statistics site shows homicides between 37 and 55 over the last six years except for a spike to 72 in the peak pandemic year of 2021.
This year’s homicides show a spread across Tucson, showing Lt. Wine’s point that no place is immune to violent crime.
Data is crucial ammunition for Tucson Police. Analysts find patterns where people, places, guns and drugs add up to trouble.
“There's crime occurring in a park. The park may not be in the source issue. The source issue may be an apartment complex down the street, within a close proximity that has a lot of nexi to or nexus to that crime, and it's identifying that network to reduce that crime in that area.”
Lt. Wine says police can break up these networks of trouble with arrests, but also with other city resources like parks programs and youth outreach.
And he says when homicides do happen Tucson Police have a strong record of solving those crimes. He says most cities solve about half of their homicides, but Tucson solves about 80 percent.
